Investigations on Physical, Mechanical, and Wear Characteristics of SiC-AA7075 Alloy Composites Fabricated by using Powder Metallurgy Method

This research study investigates physical, mechanical, and sliding wear characteristics of SiC (0–15 wt.% @ step of 5%) reinforced AA7075 matrix composites fabricated using powder metallurgy (with floating die-pressing). Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array and ANOVA were used to parameterize wear operating variables and assess their relative contribution. Further, analysis via regression equations, contour plots, and surface plots generated using the response surface method have been used to study their inter-relationship. It has been observed that alloy composite having 5 wt.% SiC tends to optimize the overall performance evaluation. Besides this, it has been observed that reinforcement content leads to a substantial increase in compressive strength (~ 20.1%) and hardness (~ 9.64%), while density (~ 13.7%) and wear rate loss (~ 97.73%) decrease significantly. Thus, such an optimal composition may prove to be a promising candidate for sophisticated technologies used in the aerospace, defence, and automotive industries.